Like thousands of other Palestinians in Gaza, Hind Al-Nawajha takes a dangerous, miles-long journey every day to try to get some food for her family, hoping she makes it back alive.
Accompanied by her sister, Mazouza, the mother of four ducked down and hid behind a pile of rubble on the roadside as gunshots echoed nearby.
“You either come back carrying [food] for your children and they will be happy, or you come back in a shroud, or you go back upset [without food] and your children will cry,” said the 38-year-old, a resident of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.
“This is life, we are being slaughtered, we can’t do it any more.”
In the past two days, dozens of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire as they tried to get food from aid trucks brought into the enclave by the United Nations (UN) and international relief agencies, Gaza-based medics said.
On Thursday, medics said at least 51 people were killed by Israeli gunfire and military strikes, including 12 people who tried to approach a site operated by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in the central Gaza Strip, the latest in near-daily reports of people being killed while seeking food.
The Israeli military said there were several attempts by “suspects” to approach its forces in the Netzarim area in the central Gaza Strip in a manner that endangered them. It said forces fired warning shots to prevent suspects from approaching them and it was currently unaware of injuries in the incident.
In an email, GHF criticised Gazan health officials, accusing them of regularly releasing inaccurate information. It said Palestinians do not access the nearby GHF site via the Netzarim corridor, but it did not address questions about whether it was aware that such an incident had occurred.
Thirty-nine people were killed, meanwhile, in separate Israeli air strikes in the northern Gaza Strip, medics said. One of those strikes killed at least 19 people, including women and children, in a tent in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, they added.
Another strike killed at least 14 people and damaged several houses in Jabalia, in the north of the enclave, medics said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army on those attacks.
In recent days, the Israeli military said its forces had opened fire and used warning shots to disperse people who it said posed a threat when approaching areas where troops were operating. It said it was reviewing reports of civilian casualties.
Israel has been channelling much of the aid it is now allowing into Gaza through the GHF, which operates a handful of distribution sites in areas guarded by Israeli forces.
The Gaza health ministry says hundreds of Palestinians have been killed trying to reach GHF sites since late May.
The UN rejects the GHF delivery system as inadequate, dangerous and a violation of humanitarian impartiality rules. Israel says it is needed to prevent Hamas fighters from diverting aid, an allegation Hamas denies.
The GHF said in a statement on Wednesday that it had distributed three million meals across three of its aid sites without incident.
The Gaza war was triggered when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 55,600 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, while displacing almost the entire population of more than 2 million and causing a hunger crisis.
The Norwegian Refugee Council warned on Thursday that more than one million people were without adequate shelter, saying equipment such as tents and tarpaulins had been blocked by Israel from entering since March 1st.
Nawajha returned empty-handed on Wednesday from her journey to find food, flopping down exhausted on the dusty ground outside the tent in Gaza City where she has been sheltering with her family for the past 20 days.
They say they try to force their way into the distribution site when trucks carrying aid arrive, but are often outmuscled by men, who sometimes fight over sacks of flour coming off UN trucks.
“[When] there is no food, as you can see, children start crying and getting angry,” said Nawajha. “When we are for three, four kilometres or more on our legs ... Oh my ... our feet are bruised and our shoes are torn off.” – Reuters
